Sony sold their entire portofolio of Square-Enix shares
Sony Corporation sold their complete portfolio of Square-Enix (SE) shares. For over a decade Sony’s gaming division; Sony Computer Entertainment held a stake of 8.25% in Square-Enix, a stake which now has been sold in its entirety to SMBC Nikko Securities.
Square-Enix known most for creating the Final Fantasy franchise (although technically Square were responsible for the birth of the famous RPG brand, as many of you may know) came to be when Square and Enix merged in 2003.
Square-Enix
Last year Square-Enix business practices garnered some industry wide critique when the company stated how the reboot of Tomb Raider failed to meet expectations. A crazy notion, knowing that in the first month alone the game sold around 3.6 million copies. In the last two quarterly reports Square-Enix did manage to turn things around by showing a return to profitability. Even though the share price of the publishing giant improved over the last twelve months, Sony probably could have gotten a better deal if they would have sold their SE shares back in January when a share went for ¥2895 ($28.25) compared to ¥1685 ($16.44) now.
Sony fiscal year
The PlayStation 4 is a huge success and with sales of the console just north of 7 million units it greatly exceeds the company’s estimations. The PlayStation brand is doing great, especially when compared to some other divisions at Sony. Normal business practices dictate the current restructure and realignment of interests.
Sony hasn’t issued out an official statement in regards to selling their Square-Enix shares but it most probably has a lot to do with the company’s need to free up resources. Sony parted ways with their 9.52 million Square-Enix shares for approximately ¥15.3 billion ($150 million), of which Sony will receive cash proceeds on a consolidated basis on April 21th 2014.
Did Sony lose faith in Square-Enix?
Since the news of this sale broke out the internet began speculating about it; Why now? Sony abandons sinking ship, Final Fantasy XV exclusive on Xbox One, “give us a FF VII remake” etc.
Although technically speaking a possibility, most of the examples above are just plain silly. However this recent event might give us some insight in what we can expect from Square-Enix in the immediate future. Either Sony just sold their stake in SE to:
- Free up extra funds; focussing on a short term goal of staying in the black during the current fiscal year. This would mean Sony doesn’t believe Square-Enix will make a big splash this year, at least not enough to warrant keeping the SE shares.
- Sony decided that they no longer need those shares
- Sony indeed lost faith in Square-Enix.
What do you guys think? What will this means for the future (relationship between) Sony and Square-Enix?Show your support for articles by sharing them through social media (Twitter, Google+, Facebook etc.) or by telling your grandmother about what you’ve read. You can weigh in your thoughts in the comment section or contact me directly on twitter @italkgame
Probably Sony lost faith in Square-Enix.
+1
+2
And also some time ago 2~3 months ago on gamespot there was article about square enix trying to venture (expand) their pc gaming share. Their arguments were kind of vague but between the lines it was something like: “Well we shoveld out FF VII and VIII on pc (steam) and it kinda sold, so we might look into selling our other games too on pc.”
And another thing is that square enix bought eidos some years ago and they have the actual knowledge on how to build software on a pc platform.
Square enix is almost always a developer living in its protected console habitat they have zero to null experience.
Their last final fantasy on pc was XI and it was a catastrophe and their new Final Fantasy XIV is not “sooo” good doing either.
Depends on at what angle you look at it.
Also all platforms are now nearly identical pc x64 and x86 on open gl as well as direct X, the xbone x86 with direct X only (open gl support hidden / deactivated in the gpus) and ps4 being a x86 with a custom linux and open gl (direct X support hidden / deactivated).
Square enix will still make games for ps4 aswell as xbone and maybe pc. They can now earn thrice the share instead of limiting them to sony or m$. Sony and M$ and maybe steam too will still earn their share per every licensed copy sold.
And if square enix shipwrecks (150 million $ paying to sony alone) due to a bad financial year to come, sony could care less, they might even use the oppertunity to buy square enix whole as well as getting eidos in the process.
SE aren’t buying the shares back here. Nikko Securities are so they are the ones paying Sony sot Square Enix. SEs main concern here is if this transaction pushes thier share price down because of this idea (of ‘lack of faith in SE’.)
Does not matter if company xy or yx buys it, as you already pointed out, they worry about their share value.
A transaction in this size normally rattles the roster and their share value will sink a little.
Now if this nikko securities sees that SE is a close to zero or even negative after a full financial year, they will throw their SE shares on the market again.
Others might do so too, reducing the share price further and further.
This is the oppertunity that I meant to buy out SE as a whole, claim all IP’s and silently reduce or shutdown SE.
Sad story but has happened with other companies…
@Thrawn: Final Fantasy XI server has been up for more than 10 years, even up to this day. So how exactly was FFXI a cathastropy?
Obviously you haven’t noticed the mithra all over the place. Heh.
I would just like to point out that most of the world has lost faith with Square-Enix by now.
LOL Those rumors where do those come from XD
nothing will change between them imo
My opinion is the lack of being able to get exclusives on their side… Why would they support a company giving an exclusive to the competetor which has sold SO MANY fewer units… Further explination : We are winning the console war so here is our support to make a game that might entice someone to buy the Microsoft system instead of ours.
Then SE deserve it.
Lol! We won the console wars? It just began. Stop with the fanboyism.
We won the console war? I’m not a fanboy, but it sounds like you are if your refering to yourself and sony as a we. I’ll get an one eventually… when the price comes way down cause I spend way to much on the ps4 as it is now.
I feel like I might need to spell out my original post. I did say we, but if you pay attention I was speaking AS sony, and I didn’t say they won, but winning which is a fact right now.
this sounds like it was over due. i mean the last good square game i played was FF9 on PSX… yeah they had some good titles on PS2 i feel like square lost their way.
Not a fan of X?
I like my VI-IX (also Tactics is amazing but we’re oranges to mandarins here ;).) I do prefer text dialogue to voice acting unless it is superb (spoiler; it’s not) so that may stronlgly influence these prefereneces…also why im living on psp/psv/ds/3ds and dusting my consoles or using them them as media players.
I lost faith in Square Enix when Kingdom Hearts III went multi-platform…I believe Sony lost faith too.
I agree there, Kingdom Hearts 3 should be PS4 exclusive
Final Fantasy X was the last decent game in the series. That dates quite a ways back.
:0 theyre gna buy pokemon license
Jajajajaja yeah right and the moon is all cheese XD
i think they should have waiting for FFXV to come out and KH3 announces release date, SE announces a new game and bravely default 2 or something; shares are as high as ever, then sell everything.
SE stock is a *** sine wave seriously with thier long development times etc. Sony probably held until this time aniticipating better sales for the FFX hd remakes (note: baseless speculation.)
tomb raider was nice but it had a forgettable story, plus no *** physics for a 2013 game like really.
their ff games really have no direction anymore, this real time battle system sucks its either real time or all animations stop completely and the game pauses to display a half ***ed battle. in real time battles all monsters are scripted to attack over and over at the split second their cooldowns are off while you are figetting with the pointless menus.
I already lost my faith in Square Enix when they made FFXIV ARR pay to play instead of buy to play.
I feel the Square Enix company as a whole has one fatal flaw. They simply refuse to listen to their fans and give them what they want. Look at all of the suggestions out there for remakes (FFVII) and sequels to current games that go unheard. They seem to have an attitude of “Oh we heard you when you said what you wanted, but, we know better than you what you really want”. I have not bought any of their games in years despite being a big fan on PS1, they have not caught my attention lately on consoles. FFIII and IV on DS were better to me than the big budget releases that seem to lose money . Have been looking at Bravely Default but $40 for a portable game that may let me down again is a lot of money for me to risk. I rent or demo before buying any of their games anymore. They do not listen!
see, the problem with that is that SE’s fans are divided in what they want, and so no matter what SE does half of the fans have a problem with it. So what’s wrong with them just doing what they think is best? they did make the games originally. Personally, i think that the 13 serious is awesome, if a bit confusing. I’ve put in 100 hours between X and X-2, and i’m still only less than half way through X-2. Everyone has different tastes, so it makes sense that some people are disappointed by SE’s decision.
If you can pick up Bravely Default for a good price do it. Great game. Kind of a mashup of III,IV,V with an interesting new battle system.
I just keep thinking of 4 Heroes of Light and having to “charge” every move for multiple turns with no way to directly target an enemy. Bravely Default kind of seemed that way to me also from the demo (it did let me target specific enemies though) although I admit I spent very little time with it. I read good things about Bravely Default though so I may go out on that limb. Thanks for the recommendation. I guess my real problem is that Heroes of Light was a very big letdown for me after III and IV. It is possible I am being unfair after some disappointments.
I have not played Bravely Default so can’t present my opinion but from what I know it has evolved from Heroes of Light so your complaints may be valid.
It gets good reviews and the word of mouth is rather flattering to it so best way is to check and see for yourself.
I would say definitely pick up Bravely Default if you enjoyed FFIII and it’s job classes. The game is similar to that but with many different endings. To fully see the story you need to beat the game FIVE times lol I’m still on my first play through but the game has definitely kept my attention and interest so far even with the FFX/X-2 remakes just being released. Trust me, if you enjoyed FFIII, definitely get Bravely Default(even if the game is a little on the long side). You will not be disappointed.
Bravely Default is one of those games that was cool first time, okay second time, annoying third time, mind dulling fourth time, and shoot me in the *** face fifth time. When your game’s story falls off so hard that we need you to replay THE WHOLE *** THING 4 more times for the true ending, that my friend is a *** game. got all lvl 99 characters, full village and maxed out all jobs. It was painful in a FFXIII way.
Broke down and picked it up Monday. Very difficult to start but I do like it so far. Thanks for the recommendations. Starting with the demo again so I can get those bonuses and I like the idea of the way that they did that although not everything carries over. I hope that it does not get as old as the above post says as it was $40 and I consider that too much for a portable game.
The notion that Sony lost faith in Squeenix is a little silly. They are a bussiness and they do not base their decisions on faith. Squeenix made a couple of blunders lately (FF XIII, FF XIV original release, FF All the Bravest) but their western games are selling like hot cakes (granted, their budgets are overblown so even selling 3-5 million copies is considered short of expectations) and is overall profitable if a little shaky.
From the fact Sony sold Squeenix shares at a lower price we can safely assume it was a necessity to keep the company more stable. Yeah, PS4 is selling like crazy and Playstation branch is going strong but Sony has been bleeding money left and right in recent years. They have sold some of their office buildings to cut down on costs and get some hard cash. So this thing seems like another action to do just that and is another sign that Sony as a company is still not in the best shape.
Maybe is a trick from sony to buy and safe square-enix most of the games square try to promote in big fail fxiii-1-2-3 ffxv hitman tomraider ect.. don’t make the money they realy need so if sony did not losse fate in square is possible.
you forgot that Sony got $150 millions from the sale, not $28 millions like you reported.
I didn’t forget to post that amount is and has been in the article the whole time ^^
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/04/17/sony-sells-off-all-its-square-enix-shares/
read this it is $150 millions
Their games were the best when they were just Square. In 2003 when they merged with Enix, it just seemed like they didn’t put as much effort into their titles anymore.
Square-Enix lost the view on how to make good games for quiet a long time. When it was Squaresoft, you have tons of awesome games, like the pre-X FFs, Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve, Kingdom Heart, Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger, just to name a few.
Since they merged with Enix, everything changed, their games started to be boring and boring (most of them).
Also, I don’t forget the main treason Square-Enix made to Sony way back in 2006. FF XIII was due to be a PS3 exclusive (among many other games), but at the last hour they decided to go multi-plat (hence the 4 DVDs jokes for FF XIII on Xbox 360).
Maybe now, along with this new FF game exclusive to Xbox One, Sony decided that they’ve had enough. “If you fool me once, it’s my fault. If you fool me twice, it’s yours”.